


My King a Lost King

by inusagi



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Eggsy, Everyone pines, Feedback and concrit welcomed, Harry to the Rescue, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Harry, M/M, Slow Burn, There are both scenes of rape and scenes of dubious consent here, This story is a bit of an experiment to be honest but I'm very wrapped up in it, and the spy stuff does not go well, fuck or die trope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:20:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inusagi/pseuds/inusagi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New and Improved! </p><p>Kingsman busts up a human trafficking ring, but the mission goes wrong in so many ways. Harry and Eggsy fall apart in the aftermath, and fail to see that they need each other to put themselves back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Savile Row

**Author's Note:**

> I sing what was lost and dread what was won,  
> I walk in a battle fought over again,  
>  **My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;**  
>  Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,  
> They always beat on the same small stone.  
> \-- _What Was Lost_  
>  William Butler Yeats

                                               

There was something mildly nauseating, Eggsy thought, about the way the dining room at the shop smelled. He couldn’t quite place it, not all of it. Mothballs, definitely, and that furniture cleaner that was obviously made by people who had never been in the same room as a lemon. Cigars, maybe, and the mystery scent. He didn’t know what it was, but it was _definitely_ something that reminded him of the care home his Gran had been in before she’d passed.

He looked at the other two men seated at the Round-Table-that-wasn’t-even-fucking-round and wondered why they didn’t seem to be able to smell it. Was it their age? Did old people _know_ about the old people smell? Not that Percival and Harry were like... _pensioners_ or anything, but Eggsy didn’t understand how they could sit there, prattling on about Percival’s bloody corgi like the room they were sat in didn’t reek like the unholy love child of a citrus-scented Methuselah and Al Capone’s rotting corpse.

When Merlin walked in, Eggsy was debating whether Percival would notice being sniffed—given what a creeper move that was and how everyone in this room was basically a highly skilled super-spies, he was leaning towards _yes_ —and was grateful for the distraction. That, and Merlin always smelled like he’d soaked himself in espresso for a week, so it was a pleasant change.

“Your glasses, please, gentlemen.”

Eggsy loved this part. Super secret spy glasses were _well cool_ , and he felt like James Bond every time he got a mission brief.

On the portrait-screen was a map of Mexico, with several regions near the south-eastern peninsula highlighted in green.

Merlin cleared his throat. “A sex trafficking ring came to our attention last week when the daughter of our ambassador to America was abducted from a nightclub in Cancún.” He flashed to the photograph of a pretty blonde girl, smiling so widely that Eggsy’s cheeks ached in sympathy. “Miss Davies was, thankfully, recovered. She managed to escape her…buyer’s home while he was asleep. Upon interview, she painted a rather bleak picture of the reality of those captured. The man who purchased her, if one can call him that, was less delicately interrogated, but was unable to put names to the organization’s leadership. We were, however, given information on entering this establishment as a potential client. The transcripts to both conversations can be found in the mission dossiers.”

Harry leant forward from his seat at the head of the table. “Is this a large operation or a new one? What do the CIA and MI-5 have to say?”

The screen switched back to the map.

“Because of the current upheaval in Mexico, the kidnappings were going, as a whole, unnoticed by the international community, and, until now, there has been no profile made for either the victims or the organization.”

“Those poor dears,” tutted Percival, shaking his head sadly.

“Quite,” Merlin agreed. “We were able to find some similarities with incidents in these three areas.” He pointed to three locations. “In Cancún, Merida and Campeche, a very high incidence of kidnappings are occurring of attractive, University-aged holidaymakers. From there, we think they’re being sold as sex slaves.”

Harry and Percival followed the pointed stare Merlin turned to him, until it felt like three sets of eyes were boring holes into his skin. Eggsy pretended not to notice the way Harry’s jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. Instead, he shifted in his seat and fidgeted with his cufflinks until someone— _bless you, Merlin_ —broke the silence.

“That’s where you come in, Galahad. You’re young, foreign and attractive.”

Eggsy flashed Merlin a smile and a cheeky wink. “Thanks, guv. You ain’t so bad yourself.”

“Absolutely not.” Harry practically shouted it, slamming his fist down on the table as if to solidify his order.

“Aww, don’t be like that, Arfur,” he tried. “You’re well fit, too.”

Harry ignored him completely, entirely focused on Merlin as if he wasn’t six inches to his right. “He’s too green for a mission like this. He’ll wind up a permanent fixture in some madman’s dungeon.”

“Gee, fanks, ‘Arry. I ‘preciate the vote of fuckin’ confidence.”

Even Percival, who Eggsy rarely worked with, was looking at their boss with his brow furrowed. “Have you gone daft? Less than seventy-two hours ago, Galahad was in Cairo, parkouring across rooftops while mercenaries shot at him. How is this more dangerous?”

“He’s—“

“No,” snapped Merlin. “Alastair is right, and you know it. This is a reconnaissance mission, nothing more. We only need to know who the bosses are, so we can eliminate them in settings away from these human shields, and gain access to their sales records to see if we can locate and liberate their past victims. Eggsy will be there no more than a week. Percival will go in and purchase him. We’ll have valuable intelligence at both ends of the organization, and then we will dismantle it.”

“Send someone more experienced, Merlin.”

“There ain’t nobody else,” Eggsy found himself snapping. “Who you gonna send? Ector? He’s got more fuckin’ grey hair than you do. A bunch of sickos kidnappin’ young people ain’t gonna suddenly decide to start pickin’ up geezers.”

“You wouldn’t have any of your kit, Eggsy,” Harry started exasperatedly, though his face was a very careful, stony mask. “No weapons, no bulletproof tweed. If everything goes tits up, we may not be able to rescue you.”

Eggsy shook his head. He flat out refused to be drawn in by Harry’s tantrums as he usually was.

“There are people that need help, Harry,” Percival murmured, soft and placating. “This is our job. We’re sent in dark to missions often enough.”

Merlin tutted. “As if I’d spend all this bloody time training that brat—“

“Oi!”

“—and just let him fuck off to the recesses of Latin America. He can take his glasses—they likely won’t touch those—and I’m fitting him with a GPS microchip. We can’t lose him.”

“And you can’t baby him,” Percival added in the comforting tones of a friend. “I’ll bring him home, safe and sound.”

Honestly, Eggsy was more than a little offended by this. Harry did this often, trying to coddle and protect him from the world’s seedy underbelly. He knew that his mentor-turned-boss thought of him as the uncouth little urban youth that he rescued from a lifetime of poverty, but Eggsy was fed up. Harry was not his father, no matter how hard he tried to be, and Eggsy was never gonna stop wanking to fantasies of him long enough to accept him as a Daddy figure.

_Well...not in the literal sense of the phrase, at least..._

The point was, his job was to save people. Harry couldn’t go on treating him as though he were made of glass.

Eggsy knew the missions would be difficult when he signed up. They couldn’t all be quick breaking and entering or hacking. If this is the mission Kingsman—and by Kingman, he totally means Merlin—thinks he’s qualified for and wants to send him on, then so be it. He’s there.

“No,” Harry said—finally—with a put-upon sigh Eggsy has come to associate with frustration. “No, Alastair, you stay here. I’ll go. I’ll buy Eggsy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very, very sorry about the putting up and taking down of the original version of this fic. I found that I genuinely hated it--not the premise, but the way I executed it. I have outlined, fleshed out and fiddled with it so that it's nearly unrecognizable as the same plot bunny. It's like a plot jackalope, now.  
> I am anxious to post this, but I promise that, come hell or high water, I will not be deleting or abandoning this version of the fi. I have outlined it to be at approx 16 chapters.  
> Also, I'm really sorry for the whole posting-low-quality-fic thing, and I hope that this version kind of, sort of makes up for it. At least in like...brownie points for effort?


	2. Cancún

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My chapter outline began "Eggsy gets drunk and flirty in Mexico." What follows is...not flirting. I don't even know anymore.
> 
> Also, shout out to[ mustardprecum](http://mustardprecum.tumblr.com/) and [wolfdogs-den](http://wolfdogs-den.tumblr.com/) for being awesome and supportive. I love them.

American girls were _fucking amazing._

Eggsy had thought that he’d already witnessed the most brazen a pretty bird could be when that princess offered up her admittedly fine derriere as a reward, but these girls honestly just raised the bar.

He had to respect it, too, how these girls were just determined to get what they wanted. After months of obsessively daydreaming about his boss’s prick, there was something to be said about the direct approach.

It was a fucking wet dream, is what it was. The blonde had her hand down his trousers, her tiny fingers stroking his prick while she nipped and sucked at his throat. Her friend—or were they sisters? Eggsy couldn’t remember—was snogging him breathless and practically grinding her cunt against his thigh. The leg of his jeans was soaking wet and it was a major fuckin’ turn on.

It was a-fucking-mazing. This was definitely the way to kick off a mission, if you asked him. This little reward, for lack of a better word, made him feel a lot better about the fact that—if things went well—he’d end the evening being kidnapped and stuffed into the back of a dirty lorry. It’d be really nice to get off before everything went down.

If only Harry would _stop fucking yapping in his ear_.

Eggsy was definitely going to have words with Merlin about how involved he let Arthur be on this mission. It was distracting at best and completely unprofessional at worst.

Merlin ran missions, Arthur did paperwork. That was how Kingsman worked.

But, oh no, not this time. No, Harry was so damned determined to dig his heels in on the whole Eggsy-can’t-hack it thing and insisted on being patched into Merlin’s surveillance feeds.

Mostly, when the agents were on mission, Merlin was pretty quiet. He only chimed in when they needed something, preferring instead to let them get on with their jobs. Now, because Harry was being a childish little shit, they wouldn’t stop sniping with each other. He tried—very hard—to tune them out, but well...it was Harry, wasn’t it? He’d spent ages fantasizing about what that posh voice would sound like in his ear when he brought himself off.

_Damn him._

“—only saying that this sort of behaviour is beneath a gentlem—“

“Oh, like you’ve never used a mission to get a leg over.”

And that was just not _fair_ , because now all he could do was picture Harry in his place. The handsy girl had gotten his trousers undone and was mouthing him through his pants, and he had two fingers in the girl on his lap.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Eggsy thought he was good, and judging by the reactions he was getting, the sisters did too, but he reckoned Harry would be a fucking god. A bloke couldn’t be as graceful as that in a fight and be rubbish in bed. It just wasn’t possible.

“—Greece 1982, Turkey 1998, Brazil 1995 and _again_ in ’98, you quite liked that one—“

When the pretty blonde— _Christ, what was her name_?—wrapped her pretty mouth around him, he looked down to watch his cock slide in past her ridiculously pink lips, the moan in his throat drowned out by Harry’s own choked curse in his ear.

Merlin, long since used to agents forgetting their specs, said only “Eyes front, lad.”

The whole situation was suddenly hilarious to Eggsy. He was sitting in some shady nightclub in Mexico, nearly five thousand miles from his home, getting blown by two gorgeous Americans while waiting to be kidnapped and sold on the sex slave market. And to top off the absolute surrealism of his life, he just gave his bosses—one of whom is convinced he’s incapable of doing his job—a frankly spectacular view of his prick.

Laughing, though, did not turn out to be the best thing he could have done. Not only did it understandably offend his lovely companions, it drew the attention of the barkeep, who had previously been blissfully watching telenovelas rather than his customers.

He turned towards the sound of the raucous, nearly hysterical laughter, Eggsy imagined they made quite the sight. One girl on her knees, another with her skirt hiked up and fanny on display, and there was Eggsy, laughing with his softening willy hanging out of his pants. It made Eggsy laugh harder, and the man shake his broom at them, yelling.

“Qué demonios?! Esto no es un bordello!”

The girls, tipsy though they were, scurried from the club, clutching their shoes in their hands and giggling. Eggsy only did up his trousers and shook his bottle of piss-warm beer slightly.

“Uno más, por favor?”

The man looked like he still wanted to beat Eggsy with his broom, but passed him another cold Corona anyway.“Elno mepaganlo suficientepara esta mierda.”

He shot the man what was hopefully a cheeky smile that said _please don’t hit me with that thing_ , and fished a 500 peso note from his wallet. “Fair enough, mate. Fair enough.”

After the barkeep went back to his telly and Eggsy swallowed half his beer down at once, Harry’s irritated voice came through his specs again. “If you’re quite finished making a fool of yourself, Galahad, I believe it’s time to declare the evening a wash. The sun rises in twenty minutes.”

He pushed himself away from the bar, and spoke quietly. “Kidnappers are so unreliable these days.”

Harry snorted, but his voice was still tight. “So it would seem. Merlin wants you to try Merida tomorrow.”

Eggsy stepped into the _baño_ and let the volume of his voice raise to cover the sound of urine hitting porcelain. “You gotta lighten up, bruv. You can’t keep acting like a knob every time someone has a little fun.”

“And you can’t continue fingering pissed slags while you’re supposed to be working.”

“I was blending in...nobody’s gonna snatch the weird bloke in the corner watching everyone, yeah? It’s my job to get kidnapped, innit?”

“This flippant shit is exactly why I didn’t want you on this mission.”

Eggsy’s retort died on his tongue when the door opened behind him. He nodded to the man as he stood in front of the urinal next to him. Eggsy made an irritated noise and shook his prick.

“This fuckin’ beer is rank,” he declared to no one in particular. “It goes right through me. Dunno why I can’t get a proper pint here.”

He realized, a bit bizarrely, that the man next to him hadn’t made a move towards his own trousers. He turned to say something—he wasn’t sure what—but the man moved and something heavy hit Eggsy in the temple.

He was unconscious before he hit the ground, his zip still undone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Spanish bits came from Google translate, I'm not gonna lie. They're probably horrible. Sorry! 
> 
> 500 Pesos is (currently) $31.91 £20.29 or €28.52.


	3. Human Traffickers HQ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deepest apologies for the wait time on this one. Not that my excuses mean anything to you guys, but work has been absolutely insane and my son has been ill. I've barely slept, let alone had time to write properly. Thank you for being patient. 
> 
> We've entered the dark part of the story, I'm afraid. **Warnings for this chapter include** graphic description of gratuitous violence, intentions to sell actual human beings, and implications of nonconsentual sexual acts. 
> 
> These things are necessary, I believe, to support things that I have planned for later in the story. They're not there because I enjoy them. If you don't believe me, or it upsets you, please feel free to contact me via tumblr and I will be happy to talk it all over with you. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy the chapter.

The first thing Eggsy noticed when he came to was that his specs were buggered all to hell. The part that would normally hook over his left ear was completely missing and the lens on that side looked like someone had buffed it with sandpaper, scratch-resistant polycarbonate be damned.

This created a rather large problem, given that the entire communications system was housed in the left arm of the glasses, and the left lens served as the screen, which meant he had fuck-all ways to get messages from Kingsman until Harry showed up next week. If Eggsy remembered correctly, though—and he was pretty sure he was—the visual transmission _to_ Kingsman was housed in the right lens.

With luck, Merlin was still watching. Harry, too, if he was _very_ lucky.

Once he’d worked through a few moments of intense fucking panic, Eggsy forced himself to remember that this was what they’d meant to happen, that even if his specs weren’t operational, things were still going according to plan. The intel they’d gotten from the ambassador’s daughter said the victims were stripped of clothes and personal possessions almost immediately, so they planned on the glasses being confiscated from the start.

So, really, things were going well.

In a horrifying sort of way.

Looking over the lenses of his scratched glasses, Eggsy took stock of the room. There were a dozen civilians, if he counted himself, all completely starkers. Some were downright filthy, like they’d been rolling around in the dirt for months, but there wasn’t a soul amongst them, huddled against the stone walls as they were, that looked truly clean. At least three of them were covered in the rust-coloured grime of dried blood.

There was a single exit. It was to Eggsy’s left, flanked by two generic _I-wear-sunglasses-indoors_ rent-a-minions with very large guns. He promptly ignored them—that type of guard was so standard that they may as well not exist in his plan. They’ll have never even fired those guns—they’ll have shit aim at best, but more likely Eggsy’d have their necks snapped before they could control the wild kickback weapons like that have. They were for show.

Now the trio across the room, nearly dead centre, on the other hand, _they_ were unusual.

The bright red settee was nothing short of surreal surrounded by so much filth. The woman who sat on it was more so, if possible. She was nothing short of beautiful, in the sort of way that both drew you in and repulsed you. Her ginger hair was curly and long, on just the right side of frizzy. Red was obviously a theme with her—her lipstick, her dress, her fingernails, all the exact same shade of scarlet and with the way her impossibly long legs were crossed, you could just see the crimson sole of her Louboutin pumps.

She scanned the room with all the disinterested haughtiness of an empress.

Standing on either side of her were another pair of guards. Eggsy could tell, though, that _these_ guards meant business. They weren’t holding their guns—nice, normal handguns for once, tucked away in the same type of holster Harry was in the habit of wearing. They didn’t seem like the type of blokes who even _owned_ sunglasses, either—like the sun just wouldn’t fucking _dare_ shine in their eyes.

The woman’s gaze settled on a woman about three metres to Eggsy’s right. She was pretty beneath her coating of dirt—though, he supposed, they all were—with matted brown hair and the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen.

Red murmured something to her guards and watched as they dragged the girl—kicking and screaming—into the centre of the room. The girl had a lot of fight in her, even once a handgun was pressed against her temple and Eggsy couldn’t help but feel impressed.

Once the girl is in the centre of the room, the woman selects another captive, a lanky boy who couldn’t be more than sixteen. The guards made a move towards him, clearly expecting another fight, but the boy strode forward on his own steam. His head was held high and he had a determined set to his jaw.

Their “host” made a show of uncrossing her legs and leaning forward, as though she’d just noticed them all standing huddled against the walls, tense and terrified. She smiled brightly, her teeth almost shockingly white, and spoke.

“I don’t want to be _that girl_ who goes on and on about profit margins, but some of you are doing a really bad job. This is a business, kids. We’ve got a bottom line. We’ve got expenses! And some of you are undermining that.”

This was definitely one of the top five surreal moments of Eggsy’s life, sitting in a dirty room that smelled like a latrine, surrounded by nude kidnap victims and listening to what amounts to a productivity pep-talk about the status quo. It was pure madness.

“What you all have to understand,” she continued, cheerfully but with the air of a schoolteacher disappointed in her students for not studying. “Is that we have expenses here. We have to _feed_ you. We have to keep a _roof over your heads._ You should be thanking us, really, and doing everything in your power to _do your fucking jobs._ ”

The jaunty, winning tone disappeared suddenly, as though a switch had been flipped. In its place was a horrifying mixture of sadism, disgust and bitterness. She pointed at the girl with the matted hair, who was still sobbing pitifully on the ground with guns pointed lazily at her.

“This little bitch, for example, has been with us for six months. It’s like she’s not even trying! How do you even go through twelve full auctions without _anyone_ wanting to buy you? Fucking pathetic.”

Eggsy watched her lean back on the settee once again, re-crossing her legs and smiling that toothy, shark-like smile.

“So here’s the thing. If you’re not going to make me money, you’re sure as fuck gonna entertain me. You—“ She pointed to the boy. “I want you to wrap your grubby little fingers around her throat and squeeze until I say stop.”

The others turned away—some into the comforting arms of another hostage, others simply studying the water stains in the concrete, but all with sad resignation written all over their faces. No one there was going to rush to the girl’s aid.

And Eggsy...Eggsy would have to watch it happen. If he stepped forward now, he’d be shot on the spot. The girl would still die and the plan—the plan to save every captive soul in this room and all the people that these people would abduct and exploit in the future—would fail.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

The girl would die, dirty and alone in some dank Mexican cage. Her family would never know what happened to her, and maybe that would be a blessing to them when even the people surrounding her would ignore her final moments, her struggles, her pleas.

Eggsy couldn’t help her. He couldn’t do much, really, other than pray that her suffering would end quickly, but he knew he couldn’t turn away like the others. Someone, _anyone_ other than these psychos had to remember this.

It was a fear of his, in this line of work. It seemed inevitable. He’d grown up without knowing what happened to his dad. He mum still had no clue. Roxy’s predecessor, the Lancelot he’d been trained to replace, had died alone. No one had any inkling what happened to him, other than that he’d last transmitted from a mountaintop cabin in the middle of nowhere. They’d never even recovered a body for the family to bury. Eggsy wasn’t even sure there _was_ a family to send a body to, if there had been one.

He didn’t know if this woman had a family. He didn’t know her name or where she was from. He only knew that she had beautiful blue eyes and that Agent Galahad of Kingsman would remember her death until his own last breath.

He expected some hesitancy from the lanky boy—most people, when told to kill someone, even with a gun pointed to their heads, don’t immediately follow through, but this boy did. His teeth were clenched so hard that Eggsy’s ached in sympathy, but his face was expressionless as he straddled the girl and pressed his hands down on her windpipe.

She fought. She fought hard, kicking and flailing, using her jagged fingernails to claw at him. The boy’s face and chest were a bloody mess by the time her face turned from red to blue, and his blank expression didn’t falter until the girl stopped moving.

Eggsy didn’t understand why he was still clutching, squeezing her throat when the girl was unmistakably dead and the boy was unmistakably broken by it, tears streaming down his face even as the trickle of blood there slowed. Eggsy glanced at the woman in red and understood.

He hadn’t been told to stop.

The woman had said this would be entertainment, and it certainly seemed to be. Her cheeks were flushed, giving her face an unattractive rosy glow that wasn’t helped by the too-keen gleam in her eyes. She was slowly rubbing her thighs together, squirming in a way that was unmistakable even if she wasn’t practically panting.

The guard to her left bent at the waist to whisper in her ear. “Y-yes, you’re absolutely right, Hernando. Completely unsellable,” she said, her voice husky, and pointed almost carelessly. “Him.”

The guard—Hernando, apparently—strode across the room and pulled a stocky boy by the hair to the centre of the room.

“Fuck him,” the woman orders. “Fuck him ‘til he cries. Make him _bleed._ ”

The stocky boy showed the hesitation Eggsy had expected from the other one. He looked from the girl, her lifeless eyes bulging, to the boy and his stricken, gory face and fell to his knees, sobbing.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

The room was suddenly incredibly tense, like everyone was holding their breath.

The woman sighed the sigh of the inconvenienced and stood, straightening her skirt from where it had hiked up. She gestured absently to the centre of the room and strode out with one of her guards. The other, Hernando, shook his head and fired two shots that were too-loud for the small, windowless room.

The boys crumpled in an unceremonious heap, filthy and blood-soaked and sad.

Hernando shook his head again and muttered something Eggsy couldn’t hear before striding resolutely from the room.

The bodies stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still [mandigolightly](http://mandigolightly.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, if you want to come shout headcanons at me or something.


	4. Auction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of Eggsy's emotional roller coaster and the dreaded auction.

On the flight to Mexico, Eggsy had tried to prepare himself mentally for what was to come. He read interview in the dossier about some of the flat-out _horrors_ that the Ambassador’s daughter had witnessed. He read it five times, and had convinced himself that if he _knew_ what would happen, he could get through it at least mostly unscathed.

He wasn’t trying to fool himself, not really. He knew that if he saw even a quarter of what was described in that file, he’d need therapy for the next 90 years, at least. He was completely aware that the Eggsy who left England wasn’t the same man who’d come back.

But he was a _Kingsman_ , damn it. He was trained to compartmentalize, to process information in an abstract, analytical manner, rather than letting his knee-jerk reactions rule him. He could be objective. He could save the bloody day.

The problem was, he focused on the wrong parts. He’d been focused on the squalor, the fact that people would die, the potential for sexual assault happening to or around him. He hadn’t thought of a dozen other things that quickly broke him down.

He hadn’t considered how utterly useless he’d feel when the dank cell was filled with the heart wrenching sobs of a sixteen year old called Daisy—and _oh_ , but that hurt like a knife to the gut—who just wanted her mum.

He hadn’t considered how dehumanizing it was to have your head shaved when they’d all started getting lice. He’d done it, before, when he’d joined the Marines, but it felt wholly different now. Back then, it had been an initiation, a way to place them all on even footing. Now, it felt as though _they_ were the parasites. Disgusting. Abhorrent. Subhuman.

He hadn’t considered the paranoia that set in his first morning there, how compulsively he squeezed at the fleshy bit between his thumb and forefinger to check that the chip was still there, as if it had anywhere to go. What if the GPS in his hand didn’t work? What if they were too far underground for the signal to work? What if Harry wasn’t able to infiltrate as a posh sadist and they’d decided to abandon him to his new life as a sex slave? He imagined how the vote would go, in that awful-smelling board room. Roxy would put up a good fight, bless her, and Merlin would moan about the inconvenience of training a new Galahad, but Harry would bring them all around with platitudes about Eggsy being aware of the risks before he took the job, about how they should’ve sent someone _better_ , someone who could _shoot the bloody dog_. It’s a pity, Harry would say, but we simply can’t waste any more precious Kingsman resources on _Eggsy_. He had always been the gimp, the expendable agent.

He spent a lot of time thinking about Harry, in one way or another. When things were...particularly bad in their now-crowded room, he daydreamed about how Harry wouldn’t allow such things to happen to anyone, wouldn’t even fear the bloody guns. He’d just waltz right up, cocky and polite even in a place like this, even in the nude, and then beat the ever-living _fuck_ out of Red and Hernando and all the other nutters with his bare hands—not even a softly greying hair out of place.

When he woke in the night, months of middle-of-the-night training winning out over bone-weary exhaustion, he comforted himself with...gentler thoughts of his boss. How, safely back in London, back in Harry’s home surrounded by framed butterflies, the older man would comfort him. In Eggsy’s fantasies—so different from the steamy, passionate fantasies he’d had before leaving—there would be cuddling and soft words of praise. There would still be kissing, but Harry’s lips would be softer, sweeter, more loving. He’d be safe in Harry’s arms, the mission successful and the bad guys taken out.

Eggsy knew his daydreams were absolute rubbish, but they made him feel better, anyway.

He thought a lot of how disappointing he was, as an agent. In the week leading up to the auction, four more captives were killed, but the room became more and more crowded. Eggsy had all that training. He could take out a target from 1,500 metres with a good sniper rifle and a light breeze. He could snap a man’s neck using only his own momentum and his calves. He could diffuse sixteen different types of bombs. But while all these kids were being kidnapped and killed and _hurt,_ he was worthless.

When Daisy was shot because Hernando was sick of her weeping, Eggsy wondered if he was doing nothing because he had to put the mission first for the greater good, or because he was a coward. He wondered what Harry would say if he could see him then.

God, what he wouldn’t do to see Harry. Even if only to hear how any of the other agents could’ve done better. Even if he was angry or disappointed or politely stoic. Eggsy would take anything he could get.

Particularly in that moment, _three fucking hours into this torture of an auction that Harry was supposed to attend_.

He was tied to a pole of some kind, his hands behind him. His fingers were just this side of tingling, but he could still squeeze the spot where Merlin’s tracking chip is still hopefully transmitting.

Potential buyers ambled up to him, one by one, most of them half-pissed but still inspecting him as though he was some sort of racehorse. Some _touched_ him. Others only looked at him, staring until he found himself wishing that Red’s henchmen hadn’t hosed him off. At least then, he’d have dirt covering him in the face of their unclean gazes.

It was a disgusting feeling, truth be told, being on display like that—bald and bound, pawed at and inspected by people who wanted to _buy_ him, mould him into some sort of plaything to use, to break and discard at their leisure.

Eggsy struggled to keep the panic from welling up inside him. The daydreams that lingered at the back of his mind rushed to the forefront, repeating tirelessly in the horrendous Technicolor of imagination.

_It’s a pity, but we simply can’t waste any more precious Kingsman resources on Eggsy._

He squeezed the juncture of his hand.

This was it, he thought. The GPS had failed. Harry couldn’t infiltrate the ranks of these posh sickos. There was no one coming to rescue him.

He was going to be sold to one of these people. This—this was about to become his life.

He’d never see Daisy again. Or his mum. Or Roxy.

He’d never see Harry again.

Eggsy started to look over the crowd of buyers, glasses of wine and hors d'oeuvres clasped gaily on their manicured fingertips, and wondered which of them it would be.

He thought of the young couple first, because the woman was pretty and the man wasn’t too bad, either, but kicked himself. He wouldn’t allow himself to be kept like some bloody pet, purchase or no purchase. What he needed to do was decide which potential buyer would give him the biggest opportunity to escape, and play up to that person if they returned.

His mind went over dozens of scenarios, considering and disregarding half the guests in rapid succession. Two candidates stood out.

The bloke in the blue suede loafers would be a good choice, because he was British, but on the downside, he obviously worked out and a bodyguard trailed after him like a well-trained puppy. He’d be hard to escape.

The little old lady would be the easiest to escape, probably. She was tiny, maybe five feet tall on her tippy-toes, and eighty if she was a day, toddling along pinching the boys’ arses like someone’s slightly pissed Gran. The problems with her were twofold. First, Eggsy shuddered to think of what he’d need to do while he bided his time. Second, while he was pants at identifying accents, he was fairly certain hers was Australian. It’d be a nightmare trying to get home from there with no identification or passport.

He was considering the pros and cons of smothering the old bird with her own pillow when a familiar face caught his eye. He thought for a moment that he was hallucinating—in all the time he’d known the man, he’d never seen Harry wear jeans or anything as casual as a red jumper. But there he was, entering Eggsy’s personal Hell like an angel of mercy, scanning the room subtly until he caught Eggsy’s eyes and gave a slight, reassuring nod.

 _Harry_.

Harry was there, finally. He hadn’t been abandoned. He didn’t need to murder a pensioner and seek asylum at an embassy. It was a bloody miracle.

Eggsy understood that Harry wouldn’t be able to simply make a beeline for him. Appearances must be kept, after all, and after all this work, no one could afford covers being blown.

It didn’t make him feel any better, of course, as Harry mingled. He stopped to inspect several of the other captives, looking for all the world like he was genuinely considering how they’d look bound and gagged in his cellar.

Harry paused for a while and shared a drink with another man—one Eggsy noticed hadn’t even been inspecting the merchandise, as it were, which struck him as odd, but he didn’t think on it long. How could he when Harry was right there, laughing at some _hilarious_ anecdote his new mate was telling him about?

That smile made Eggsy feel about a thousand times better, even if it wasn’t directed at him. It was like magic washing over him.

Eventually, after minutes that felt like hours to Eggsy’s impatient mind, Harry disentangled himself from his conversation and made his way back to the display area. He “inspected” the girl next to him, who’d had pretty blonde hair before it had been sheared off, before finally coming to stand directly in front of him.

Harry studied him for a moment, just checking him for injuries while ostensibly checking him over for more carnal reasons. He put on a good show, Eggsy reckoned, by making his eyes look all hungry and his face go all flushed. After all this madness was over, he’d have to remember to ask Harry how he manages it.

Just then, though, it made Eggsy suddenly very conscious of the fact he was starkers. He wasn’t ashamed of his body, mind. He was an athlete, and he kept up in Kingsman’s gym, but the psuedosensation of Harry’s eyes drinking him in made him very conscious of all the _much better_ circumstances he’d imagined himself nude and on display for his boss.

“Are you alright?” Harry asked, quiet as kept.

Eggsy wanted to smile, to reassure the older man that he was aces now that the Calvary had arrived. Since he was all too aware of how that would look to the deviants running the show, he kept his expression neutral and his voice low. “I would _kill_ for a hot bath right now.”

Harry smiled, an amused, fleeting thing that made Eggsy’s heart skip a beat. “We’ll have you out of here in no time,” he promised. “And I’ll do my best to ensure you get a nice, long soak.”

He reached out with long fingers to brush a smudge of dirt from Eggsy’s stomach, watching his fingers linger on soft skin and caress, whisper soft, up Eggsy’s abdomen to his chest. Harry’s expression was one of a man watching a train wreck—horrified but unable to look away.

All of Eggsy’s nerve endings seemed to be suddenly in the exact spot Harry was touching. After being here, surrounded by so much brutality and savagery, the gentle touch felt raw, exquisitely painful, painfully exquisite. Too much and not nearly enough.

Eggsy gasped when Harry’s fingers brushed over his nipple, snapping Harry out of whatever thrall he found himself under. He pulled his hand away from his protégé like he’d been burnt.

“I—I’ll go and make the arrangements, shall I?”

He scampered off in search of a salesman, leaving Eggsy where he was, tied to a pole and praying Harry hadn’t noticed that his prick was half=hard.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. 
> 
> [](http://statcounter.com/)


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